The perfect after school music courses for your child

How music courses benefit your child

In our competitive society, many children participate in extracurricular activities after school to gain an edge. These activities are well known to lay the foundation for the development of intelligence, personality, social behaviour and learning capacity, and as vital elements to ensure your child does not fall behind in their development.

Music classes are no exception and there is much research that points to their ability to boost cognitive development, enhance IQ scores and contribute to higher scores on standardized tests and particularly so in the subjects of maths and language. Recent findings in brain scans and neuroscience underline just how profound these benefits are to a child's rapidly developing neural networks.

We know from a number of studies1, that learning an instrument facilitates high levels of cognitive function, including complex problem solving, logical reasoning and conceptual tasks. Research has shown2 that musicians have highly developed memory systems which can be employed in other areas. For example3, it has been demonstrated that children with one to five years of musical training were able to remember 20% more vocabulary words read to them off a list, than children without such training could recall. Another recent large-scale study published In Frontiers in Neuroscience found that structured music lessons significantly enhance a child's cognitive abilities and these benefits transfer to other areas such as language-based reasoning, short-term memory, and lead to improved academic results4.

According to the late neuroscientist Oliver Sacks5, fMRI scans demonstrate that brains of musicians appear and function differently (and more effectively) than the brains of non-musicians. By firing neurons more brightly and faster, stronger and denser neural networks are built that can then be activated in tasks related to language, sequencing, and mathematical operations.

Musicians who begin music lessons at a young age are known to have a significantly larger corpus callosum, an area of the brain which integrates motor, sensory, and cognitive performance between the right and left lobe of the cerebral cortex6. Gordon's research found that music aptitude was developmental from birth through nine years old . By regularly strengthening this key organ, child musicians are more likely to be inventive problem-solvers, and capable of sustained attention to an activity which is helpful to academic performance. Even after one year of music study, astounding physical changes can be seen when before and after brain scans are compared. This finding is backed up by a study published by the University of Kansas which found that students in elementary schools with superior music education programs scored 22% higher in English and 20% higher in maths scores on standardized tests .

A Finnish study has found that learning music employs large-scale neural networks. Limbic areas of the brain, known to be associated with emotions, were found to be involved in processing rhythm and tonality. Processing of timbre, or tone color, activated the so-called default mode network, which is associated with mind-wandering and creativity. These results support the long held hypothesis that music enhances wide-ranging elements of learning and creative thinking.

The benefits of after school music courses can also prepare a child for longer term career and life success. Research has found a causal link between learning music and spatial intelligence which means that learning an instrument can help children visualize combining different elements such as may be required when solving a maths problem. This is an important skill used in solving multistep problems one might encounter in architecture, engineering, maths, art, gaming and especially when working with computers.

Our wide range of music classes for children are designed to give them an edge in developing their creativity, cognitive capacity and complex problem solving skills. Children can learn a growth mindset by overcoming the challenge of mastering a musical instrument, develop a greater appreciation for culture and the self, and are able to genuinely differentiate themselves from other students.

A wide range of extracurricular music classes

While exam preparation and after school study are important for children, giving students the opportunity for a more balanced learning experience through an after school music program can help them develop into more well-rounded individuals with a life-long passion outside the classroom!

Bizibuz KnowYourChild™: Find out if your child has an aptitude for music

Our unique KnowYourChild™ tools are a series of benchmarking tools for children of different ages designed to track a child’s development, highlight necessary intervention and hidden talents, guide on activities to optimize performance and monitor the efficacy of activities over time.

These tools are developed using advanced algorithms and input from top universities including the Education University of Hong Kong and Polytechnic University and senior teachers from leading institutions including the Chinese International School and Canadian International School.

Our Primary KnowYourChild™ tool is the first of its kind to gauge the creative proclivities of a child aged 6-12 years of age in order to uncover an aptitude for music. A child is asked a series of questions in the area of music that measure their ability to analyze and problem solve based on aural recordings. After the child has completed the tool, parents receive a comprehensive report of their child including smart activity recommendations targeted to address either weaker areas (performance more than one standard deviation below the mean) and to foster talents (performance more than two standard deviations above the mean). If the child has previously used the KnowYourChild™ tool, the report also includes development trend analysis in order to reflect on the impact of activities previously undertaken.

Visit our KnowYourChild™ tools in order to further explore your child’s developmental progress and activity recommendations that optimize your child’s talent in music.